Keeping the Love Going

Loosing a beloved canine friend can be a heartbreaking experience for some, and while many who lose a furry friend never take on another dog, some of us start all over again.

Steven Bender

My beloved 8-year-old chocolate lab, Abbie, was put to sleep April 1 after a mast cell tumor became too aggressive too quickly. She had been through so much: two knee surgeries, tooth extraction, lipoma removals and a tumor (a removal attempt was made but wasn’t possible). But she had the best life I could give her: she fetched ducks, chased rabbits, ate chicken nuggets. Some of you might remember when she “wrote” a couple of columns for me when she was a pup.

Even though she left a hole in my heart, as did Belle before her, I took some weeks to let her go and began looking for a new pup.

On April 26, I’d taken my mother along to pick up my new 8-week-old chocolate lab, Dawn, who I named after the waterfowling book “By Dawn’s Early Light.” While picking up that pup, we saw other pups from another litter, too. That was too much for Mom, and she wanted her own pup. Needless to say, there are two pups at home now, both six months old, and they are a handful.

Both have already had a procedure to help prevent possible hip dysplasia. Dawn seems to have the condition already, which is unfortunate because I so badly want her to be another duck dog, which requires slogging in mud, running and swimming. We’ll know more in a few months if the surgery helped.

Mom named “her dog” Violet for no other reason than she and her granddaughter, Kelsey, liked the name. It’s possible we’ll have Violet trained to be a certified therapy dog in the next year. We’ll see. Mom was recently in a residential rehab; I took Violet in to see her a few times, and she did great.

If you want a laugh and to follow what these two pups get into or become, you can follow them on my Facebook page at facebook.com/steven.bender.121. If we put Violet through therapy dog training, I’ll create a page just for her.

Even though losing “man’s best friend” is a difficult life situation, letting some time pass and starting back over doesn’t devalue the previous dog, but rather helps honor her through taking on a new family member and keeping the love going.